Alan FURST writes books the way Frederic Chopin composed music; in bulk, with an apparent ease that belies great craftsmanship. Like Chopin, Furst has a deft ability to use the smallest changes in context to convey the profoundest of emotions.
And, like Chopin, Furst is a Romantic. Regardless of their gender or nationalities, his characters share one immutable trait: a heroic belief in the transformative power of love, whether for a nation, an ideal or another human being.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday, June 21, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 54 words Type of Material: Correction
Alan Furst: A review of Alan Furst's "The Spies of Warsaw" in the June 7 Calendar section said "Spies" was the author's 10th novel. It is his 14th novel. Furst has written four stand-alone novels as well as a series known as the "Night Soldiers" novels. "Spies" is the 10th novel in that series.
"The Spies of Warsaw" is Furst's 10th novel. Like the others, it involves the work of European spies in the 1930s and '40s. Few writers tread such a narrow path so often. Fewer still do it without repeating themselves. Furst's genius is to revisit the same era and character types while making each journey new and fascinating.
A sort of prequel to the 1995 book "The Polish Officer," about the Polish resistance to Nazi occupation, the new novel involves the months before the war, when the future was unknown. The year is 1937. Germany secretly prepares to invade Poland while officially disavowing any intention to do so.
Col. Jean-Francois Mercier, a decorated World War I veteran, becomes the French Embassy's new military attache. Mercier's day job (handling routine diplomatic work) and his nightly social obligations (attending various dinners and soirees in and around the Polish capital) provide the perfect cover for his real task: stealing German war plans.
Noble in lineage and character, Mercier is a man of the world, battered by war wounds and life experience, but unbowed. Were he alive, Jean Gabin would play him in the film. Blessed with a poet's sense of irony and a boxer's knack for slipping punches, Mercier is the classic Furst hero: tough as nails yet vulnerable, a courageous man who still gets scared and lonely. A widower, Mercier is drawn to the mysterious Anna Szarbek, a beautiful French lawyer of Polish parentage with uncertain loyalties and unclear ambitions. For Mercier, steeped in the world of false identities and deceptions, the authentic is dangerous. Real feelings compromise the spy's mission, and heartfelt emotions make the spy vulnerable to lowering his guard, often with fatal consequences.
In the days before satellites, intelligence gathering relied to a greater degree on "human assets" -- real people risking life and limb to discover what paid informants could not be relied on to convey. Furst's grasp of the technical aspects and risks of espionage during that time is remarkable. He doesn't so much describe Mercier's equipment, transportation or logistical problems as channel them.
